Try Wonders for free
Publishing in mechanical engineering? You will likely need ASME style. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers uses a numbered citation system in which the year follows the author names rather than sitting at the end of the entry.
The Official Source
The rules and quotations on this page come from ASME's own references guidance for journal authors.
One thing worth knowing: ASME illustrates its formats with invented placeholder names and titles rather than real works. That is fine for showing shape, but it means you cannot check an ASME example against a catalogue. Every example on this page is instead a real, published source, checked today against Crossref, Open Library, NASA's technical reports server, DataCite, Google Patents or the standards body's own page.
What Is ASME Style?
ASME style is the required format for ASME journals, conferences and publications. It uses bracketed numbers [1] in order of appearance — not alphabetical, not superscript — with a numbered reference list at the end. Each entry gives "the last name of each author followed by initials and/or first name."
In-Text Citations
Cite sources numerically in square brackets, in the order they first appear.
Single source:
The Stefan problem with internal heat generation has been solved in spherical coordinates [1].
Two sources:
Previous studies [1,2] have examined the moving boundary.
Range of sources:
Several groups [1-3] have reported this effect.
Numbers are assigned sequentially — the first source you cite is [1], the second [2], regardless of author name or publication date. If you cite source [3] again later, use [3] again; do not create a second entry.
Reference List Format
List references at the end in numerical order. Each entry gives author surnames with initials, then the year, then the title and publication details.
Journal Articles
[1] Williams, S., Barannyk, L., Crepeau, J., and Paulus, P., 2022, "The Stefan Problem With Internal Heat Generation in Spherical Coordinates," ASME J. Heat Transfer, 144(9), p. 092401.
Format: Author(s), Year, "Article Title," Journal Name, Volume(Issue), p. Page or pp. Pages.
Note that this journal, like many, now numbers articles rather than paginating them continuously, so the article number takes the place of a page range. Note too the ASME prefix on the journal abbreviation.
Cite the journal under the title it carried when the paper appeared. This article came out in 2022 in the Journal of Heat Transfer; ASME's current abbreviation table no longer lists that title, because the journal is now the ASME Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, abbreviated J. Heat Mass Transfer.
Books
[2] Incropera, F. P., and DeWitt, D. P., 2002, Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, 5th ed., Wiley, New York.
Format: Author(s), Year, Book Title, Edition, Publisher, Location.
Book Chapters
[3] Ligrani, P., 2018, "Full-Coverage Effusion Cooling in External Forced Convection: Sparse and Dense Hole Arrays," Handbook of Thermal Science and Engineering, F. A. Kulacki, ed., Springer, Cham, pp. 425–445.
Conference Papers
ASME conference papers carry a paper number, which goes in place of page numbers:
[4] Jibben, Z., Raghavan, N., and Bernardin, J., 2023, "A 3D Heat Transfer Model of a Glass Additive Manufacturing Process," Proceedings of the ASME 2023 Heat Transfer Summer Conference, ASME Paper No. HT2023-106673.
Technical Reports
[5] Schneider, S. J., 2015, "Analysis of Turbine Blade Relative Cooling Flow Factor Used in the Subroutine Coolit Based on Film Cooling Correlations," NASA Report No. NASA/TM-2015-218738.
Theses and Dissertations
[6] Khammar, M., 2004, "Confined Boiling Heat Transfer Over a Saturated Porous Structure," M.A.Sc. thesis, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Name the degree the institution actually awarded. McMaster's repository records this one as a Master of Applied Science, not a doctorate — a DOI's metadata often carries a generic "thesis" type, so check the repository page before you write "Ph.D."
Patents
[7] Iizuka, M., and Tanaka, H., Cement Admixture, U.S. Patent 4,586,960, filed June 26, 1984, issued May 6, 1986.
Standards
[8] ASTM International, "Standard Test Methods for Tension Testing of Metallic Materials," ASTM E8/E8M-24, West Conshohocken, PA.
Cite the version you actually used: the designation year moves as the standard is revised, and earlier designations such as E8/E8M-19 are withdrawn from the ASTM store when superseded.
Websites
[9] U.S. Department of Energy, "How Do Wind Turbines Work?" [Online]. Available: https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/how-do-wind-turbines-work [Accessed: Sept. 22, 2026].
Key ASME Conventions
- Name all authors up to ten. "If there are 11 or more authors, list the first seven in the bibliography, followed by 'et al.'"
- Year placement. The year comes immediately after the author names, before the title. This is the main visible difference from Chicago.
- Journal abbreviations. "ASME needs to be in front of all ASME titles." Take the abbreviation from ASME's own table (J Appl Mech, J Fluids Eng, J Heat Mass Transfer); for other journals, use the full title or the journal's standard abbreviation.
- No footnotes for citations. References go in the numbered list at the end.
- No Wikipedia. "ASME does not allow references to Wikipedia."
Common Mistakes
- Alphabetizing references. ASME orders by appearance, not alphabetically.
- Using superscripts. Write [1], not ¹.
- Putting the year at the end. In ASME the year follows the author names: "Williams, S., … 2022, …".
- Claiming ASME never uses "et al." It does, from eleven authors onwards — and then lists the first seven.
- Spelling out ASME journal titles. Use the ASME-prefixed abbreviation.
ASME vs IEEE
| Feature | ASME | IEEE |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Mechanical engineering | Electrical/computer engineering |
| Citation format | [1] brackets | [1] brackets |
| Year position | After authors | After title |
| Author format | Surname, Initials | Initials. Surname |
| Journal titles | ASME-prefixed abbreviations | IEEE abbreviations |
Who Uses ASME?
ASME style is required for ASME publications and is common across mechanical engineering, thermal sciences and manufacturing. Some universities accept it for theses in mechanical engineering programmes.
Sources for This Page
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers. "References" (journal author guidelines). https://www.asme.org/publications-submissions/journals/information-for-authors/journal-guidelines/references — all quoted rules above, and the table of ASME journal abbreviations.
- Crossref records for the Williams et al. article, the Ligrani chapter and the Jibben et al. conference paper (whose ASME paper number HT2023-106673 appears in the record's own proceedings file name); Open Library for Incropera–DeWitt (5th ed., 2002, LCCN 2001017854); NASA NTRS record 20150011643; McMaster University's MacSphere record for the Khammar thesis, which gives the degree as Master of Applied Science (MASc); Google Patents for U.S. Patent 4,586,960; the ASTM store page for E8/E8M-24; energy.gov for the web example.
